


even lovers drown

by Anonymous



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/F, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29520156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: AU.The vessel must have a great deal to lose, she thought, if it ventured so far with such daring.(Archive 2015)
Relationships: Bonnie Bennett/Caroline Forbes
Collections: Anonymous Fics





	even lovers drown

When Caro was young, when she and her agemates were only allowed so far as to scull through the bottomsand for small and desperate crawling things and crack them between their sharp teeth, there was a story they favoured for its appealing horror.

The story went:

Once in a faraway sea there lived a fish who fell in love with a creature that walked on land. Its heart grew sore and its heart grew aching and it could hunt and kill and feast and hunt and kill and feast and never was its belly full, never was its spirit sated. It would bear the dry air each evening as it rose to the surface and searched for the one it loved, and it would return to the sea’s embrace, to her endless comforts, only to wait for the next dusk and begin again.

At last it found its love, and so great was its passion, so all consuming, that it plunged beneath the water once more and went immediately to the witch who grants all desires and gives no blessings for free. It went to her and she took its shining scales, its filaments and fins, and at last she laid a hand on its heart, and took a piece for consumption. Lungs given and tail full of bones, the fish rose to the surface, tottered onto the sand, and went to find its love.

That was the story. There it ended. Every night they went creeping and shivering and wide-eyed into bed, cowed by the thought of a heart so lost it would forgo the sea.

It was Anna who first saw the ship, and Anna who first marked it to be of interest.

Caro had other things to occupy her - trawling the bottom, breaking open the creaking ribs of shipwrecks, hunting the strong lean sharks and spiny fish for supper - and it was some time before she returned to the surface, where she’d left her, and rippled closer to see where Anna stared so fixedly.

Anna’s tail flicked below the water, her fins shifting rapidly in a sharp query, and Caro trilled, demanding her return.

No. Anna would not return. Anna found the ship odd, and its presence odder in these...treacherous waters.

Caro was amused by this for a moment - treacherous indeed, and they knew why - rolling in the water and peeking at its bulk from below. It was ornate above water, but serviceable below, a well-made craft for humans. She surfaced again, again repeated her request.

Anna splashed her instead, gently. The vessel must have a great deal to lose, she thought, if it ventured so far with such daring.

Caro was impatient with her. She didn’t understand Anna’s fascination, and she didn’t feel the need to try. They had enough riches from dead men, and sailors were often more troublesome prey than they were worth. Caro wanted to hunt and race along the ocean cliffs, and she had no patience for fire on the water and the echoing voices of discordant men.

On another day Caro wouldn’t have bothered to follow her, would merely have flipped her tail and gone below, raced out alone or rooted out another of their school. But she was so irritated that when Anna dove beneath the water’s surface and pulsed through the waves Caro followed, hounding her fins, trailing the heavy vessel and its carelessly shed light through the dark sea.

And there they came out of the black water, their hands on the salt-worn boards, the long smooth strokes of their tails inescapable. And at first she found nothing at all to be remarked upon in the ship, though Anna swam circles around it, stared with burning eyes at the name upon its side and the twisted wooden figure on its prow.

It wasn’t until Caro stroked her tail and leapt up, chasing the impacts of heavy feet through the wood and the water, curling her strong fingers around the base of the railing and holding herself suspended with the barnacles brushing her sensitive fins, that she saw something of interest.

People crowded the deck, and not only sailors with their leathery skins and hard bones, harder hands, the kind that shouted and struck the instant they saw the flash of tail if the owner didn't come close enough in time. Instead there were also people in finery, woman-creatures in dresses propping themselves against the cabin and huddled together all out of rhythm with the waves, men-creatures in bright brassy buttons with, yes, she knew those, _swords_ , hanging by their sides.

And amongst them all, at the center of the warm voices and the trailing gazes, an eye that they all swept clumsily around, stood a girl.

Her face was not like Caro’s. Her eyes were not like Caro’s. Her hair was dark as Anna’s and it shone like the still water of a lagoon, curling against her smooth cheeks. She had human eyes and Caro stretched herself to see them keenly, warm and brown and framed by long dry lashes. Her mouth was as glossy as though it were wet. She smiled, showing teeth, and they were white and flat and herbivorous. Caro sank down, disappointed.

But the girl moved like she could have been born beneath the water, she thought; her arms were as sure and as graceful, and her long skirts swept around her like the movement of tides stirred it, folding over and around her like sand and seaweed. Caro could almost see her there, her hair tangled with salt and her red shining mouth under Caro’s fingers, her beautiful brown hands as full of every fine thing as Caro could bring.

The girl threw back her head and laughed and one hard tug on Caro’s tail startled her enough to make her drop, splashing tremendously into the sea.

They plunged beneath the waves and Caro drove hard into Anna, not angry but hard-playing. Her tail coiled and knotted in one fervent demand. Wreck it.

Anna hissed at her, teeth bared, eyes wide. She didn’t understand. Caro had not cared only a moment ago.

I want one, Caro coaxed and pled, stroking her fins along Anna’s arms, slipping her tail along Anna’s. Anna flicked her away but not angrily, her mouth folding now into concern. I want her.

No. Anna wouldn’t let her. She forbid it flatly.

Caro backstroked, sending a wash of water against Anna. It was ridiculous for Anna to save this ship.

No. Anna was firm. If this ship came through safely, they would grow bolder. Send more. If they sent enough and successfully, a few ships picked off here and there would not deter the humans, and they would be assured of eating well.

Caro left her behind, swimming in strong strokes after the ship. Again she left the water, against she climbed the side of the ship, her strong fingers digging in. If she splintered the boards, if she pulled the pieces loose and sank the great timber skeleton...

Anna had forbid it. Caro chafed, but she wouldn’t disobey. Not now, not for only a glance, not when she could look again.

And look she did, until her eyes grew dry and the light was a hand against her skin. Another night she would have given anything to plunge instead into the depths of the water, seek the solace of the impenetrable dark and the dust-fine sands, the water as keen and kind as a mother’s touch. Now she endured the dry, cracking air as the girl began to dance, and she pressed her closed eyes to the backs of her hands, letting the membrane swathe her eyes for one comforting moment, but not too long before she faced the raucous torchlight and the way it shone from the ornaments on the human’s wrappings and at her throat.

Caro had taken jewels like that before, broken fragile sea-rotted human bones to steal the lovelies and small curiosities wrapped around a throat or fisted in a bony hand. She’d stroked their hollowed skulls, disturbing the small fish that swam within, split the new bones for marrow.

But she didn’t want to now.

She didn’t want to rend those careful limbs. She wanted to smell her, wanted her in the water where every movement touched Caro with the water’s hands, where she was rendered in the gentler colours of Caro’s world.

She didn’t want the girl to stop dancing.

When she finally fell away from the ship, when the brightly-clad woman-creature had left the deck and retreated below, she was far from her reef, and the night was an enfolding hand around her, clinging but threatened by dawn.

Had she left earlier, she would not have thought twice before turning tail, swimming the long way home and sinking into the mud for a long night’s sleep. But she was so far gone already, sandy cliffs rising not so far away, and the ship moved so purposefully.

She’d see, she decided. She’d see where they went.

And then she’d know where to find the woman-creature again, should the time come.

And so she was there when the storm fell onto the human ship with a vengeance.


End file.
